


Rusty Cage

by sardonicsmiley



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Sad, Sentient Atlantis, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 05:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicsmiley/pseuds/sardonicsmiley
Summary: She has been broken so, so long, kept in a cruel purgatory where she cannot die, no matter how badly she wishes to.





	Rusty Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spook Me (the multi-fandom Halloween fic-a-thon).
> 
> Prompt: Lady in a Cage

There is pain. It is the only constant of her existence, now. All else passes and fades into the long, dark night, but the pain remains as her companion, confidant, the closest thing she has left to a friend. She cherishes it, holds it tightly through the endless hours.

It was not always so. She can remember–distant snatches of memory that rise and fall in the tangled web of her mind–when things were different. She had been something like happy, once. She had not been alone, once. There had still been pain, of course, but it had not been the all encompassing thing it was now. Back then, she had been able to push it aside, to ignore it, because there were so many other things to focus on.

She had been so busy, in those faraway days. Work had consumed her, a million tasks set up by the people that counted on her. She had performed her responsibilities, without bitterness or anger at them for the demands they set. It had been her purpose, and she was glad to fulfill it. It did no good to fight ones place in the universe. She, of all people, knew that.

But change had come, as it always did. She barely remembers the fights anymore, the unrelenting ruthlessness of the attackers. The wounds they left, the scars that mar her, are all the reminders she has left. Once, she had thought she might heal, but her body is too weak to repair itself, and there is no one to tend her, to soothe her, to doctor her.

Now, she is broken. She has been broken so, so long, kept in a cruel purgatory where she cannot die, no matter how badly she wishes to. She is alone, in pain, freezing to death constantly, and unable to do a single thing about her situation. It seems unfair to her that the cold, the freezing chill that has seeped down into the deepest part of her, has done nothing to numb the pain.

Over the time she has spent here, she has lost the clarity of her thoughts, as she has lost so much else. It is hard to focus even enough to wish for death, but she manages, sometimes. All that she loved is gone. Everyone that she held dear is dead. More than anything, she wants to join them, to move beyond this existence, even if there is nothing at all waiting for her on the other side.

The pain would cease, at least. The loneliness, the silence, the increasingly worrisome thoughts that chase each other up and down through her consciousness, they would all be gone. And if the loss of all she is, all she ever was, all she might ever have been, is the price for that, then she would gladly pay it.

There is no one here for her to barter that trade with. She is trapped, alone and alive, everyone that might have helped her long dead, rotting in their graves or picked clean by scavengers. She spares a moment to mourn for them, though she can no longer remember what even one of them looked like. Their faces are nothing but smudges in her memory, their voices static that makes her flinch, harsh and too loud. The words make no sense. Nothing does.

She wishes to not hear, but as with so much else, she is denied. Long dead voices babble nonsense words to her, and if she could, she would weep. Tears are not for her, not even now, not even after everything that has happened. She is left to stare through her blurred, ruined vision, out into the unending dark surrounding her, unblinking, unwavering, frozen.

Sometimes, she imagines she sees things moving out there in the inky black of death and eternity. She knows that to be nothing but wishful thinking. She is alone here, trapped in a prison created for her and her alone, damned to spend an eternity here. There are no other prisoners. And, even now, selfish as she feels, she would not wish for there to be. She cannot wish this fate upon another. Not even for her comfort.

Outside her cage, the pressure bears down upon her, a force so strong that she can feel it, constantly searching for a weak point, so that it may rush in and crush her. It would be a horrible death, but she still wishes for it, even knowing that it will not succeed. Her cage is not so poorly designed as that.

She is cold. She is alone. She is hurt. Her wounds are many and grievous. She wishes for peace, for death, for escape, for any end at all to the eternity she has spent in the dark, broken beyond repair, held in a universe that no longer has any use for her.

Atlantis sits on the bottom of the ocean, waiting for a death that will never come.


End file.
